Autodesk+PlanGrid is a big bet on construction digitalization
What does almost one billion US dollars buy? In Autodesk's case, PlanGrid. Yesterday, as part of its quarterly earnings, Autodesk announced that it will acquire the privately-held PlanGrid for $875 million, net of acquired cash. That's a heck...
AVEVA’s H1 benefits from solid execution
Q: How do you put together two very different companies, in the hope that 1+1 > 2?A: Very carefully.AVEVA today reported that revenue for the first half of fiscal 2019 were £343 million, up 11% as reported and up 14% in constant currencies (cc)....
PTC buys Frustum, as gen des heats up
Not sure what gen des is? Generative design is the use of assistive technologies to help refine a design. Need a chair to hold a certain sized person? Give a gen des tool a set of parameters, and let it design the chair for you -- that's called topology...
AU 2018 goes convergent
For the first time in years, I had to leave AU before the bitter end. It’s for a work commitment, so 100% necessary, but it means that this writeup doesn’t cover what will happen in the AEC and manufacturing keynotes, which took place after I...
Bentley makes AIworx official, announces second deal
Bentley's acquisitions just keep rolling. At last month's Year in Infrastructure conference, the company announced one in pedestrian simulation, LEGION, and Agency9 to complement its existing digital cities offering. Another one was hinted...
Altair + Datawatch = interesting opportunities
Yesterday, Altair announced that it wants to acquire/merge with Datawatch, prompting a lot of "who?" and "why?". Since I hadn't heard of Datawatch, I did a bit of research -- here's what I learned and why I think this combination is an...
Quickie: Altair to acquire Datawatch for analytics
Dashing out the door to an all-day meeting and this pops into the inbox: Altair is merging with really, acquiring) Datawatch, a company that makes data prep, data prediction, and high-volume data visualization technologies that Altair...
Eek – schnitgercorp.com not secure???
You may have noticed that your browser throws up a little warning that Schnitger Corp's website is not secure. That's currently true because we've run into an IT-gremlin issue related to SSL certificates. We're working on a fix and hope to turn...
Nemetschek’s Build offerings contribute to strong Q3
Nemetschek Group, the holding company for brands like Allplan, Graphisoft, VectorWorks and Bluebeam, announced results this week that show continued progress in digitizing the AEC world. The details: Group revenue for Q3 was €115 million, up...
PTC’s F18 closed strong as reinvention continues
PTC's Q4 and fiscal 2018 results, released last week, were solid yet investors were displeased because the forecasts for F19 presupposed a faster transition to subscriptions than many expected. Remember: subs mean lower initial revenue but a...
Quickie: SigmaTEK acquired by Battery Ventures
Super quick because I'm knee-deep in earnings news: Battery Ventures announced yesterday that it has acquired SigmaTEK Systems, makers of the SigmaNEST nesting solution. Nesting is the process of taking the flattened versions of 3D parts like...
Bentley’s AEC digital twin combines BIM, CAD and more
The Year in Infrastructure (YII) is Bentley Systems’ annual media fest, where new product releases, customer successes and acquisitions vie for attention. We’ll cover more of those over the next several blog posts, but today we’ll focus on one...
Very sad news: Chuck Grindstaff has died
I'm sorry to tell you that Chuck Grindstaff, former CEO of Siemens PLM and long-time PLMer, has died. To the left is Siemens' stock photo of Chuck but it's so formal and posed -- and Chuck never was. He was usually pacing and gesturing, passionately...
Quickie: Arena acquires Onmify as PLM consolidates
Arena Solutions announced via Twitter that it has acquired Omnify Software. Arena's PLM and quality management solutions target high tech and medical device companies, offering everything from bill of material (BOM, where the company started)...
AVEVA says H1 went well
Oh so many earnings this week! So far, the news has been mostly positive as customers are buying to plan. PTC continues its march to subscriptions (and caused endless kerfuffles on the earnings call because it's adopting a new accounting...
MuM’s Q3 “happy” results look good for Autodesk
Germany's Mensch und Maschine (MuM) reported results earlier this week and, as usual, we look at them to see what they might mean for Autodesk and for its broader VAR network. In case you're unaware, MuM is probably Autodesk's largest European...
Hexagon acquires Bricsys for AEC workflows
Hexagon just announced that it has acquired Bricsys, a company that's been around a long time and keeps reinventing itself -- most recently, as a provider of open, collaborative solutions for the construction CAD market with BricsCAD. BricsCAD...
Siemens’ Analyst Conference 2018: Insights, intrigue and musings
Sometimes I get to do really cool things, like this. A few weeks ago, I recorded a web episode of Allan Behrens' series on all things PLMish and IoTish for disruptive live, "the UK’s first tech TV channel". We riff on what happened (and what we...
Quickie: Altair acquires SIMSOLID
Taking a break from all things Bentley, Altair just announced that it has acquired SIMSOLID, the company based on the notion that we shouldn't need to create a mesh in order to run a simulation. Founded by Ken Welch and Victor Apanovitch, they...
Quickie: Bentley acquisitions continue portfolio buildout
Bentley's annual extravaganza, the Year in Infrastructure, kicks off today in London -- and there are (and will be) many announcements. Rather than dumping them all into one impossibly long post, I'm going to focus on one batch at a time. today, it's...
